Recently, The Washington Post editors have been shrilly demanding a timetable for the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. This bit of Deaniac bluster fails at several levels. For one, anyone older than 10 can see that this whiney piece is the direct result of Iraqis having given The Post The Finger this week when they went to the polls in numbers that sent American Leftists into what we in aviation call a ‘graveyard spiral’ of despair and hatred. Then, too, these Post essays open the vault onto what is arguably the Left’s biggest scam: ongoing programs using your money for open-ended Marxist programs. The Post and I agree on one thing: timetables for programs are essential. Unfortunately, The Post demands timetables only for those programs it dislikes.

So, I have to ask The Post, where are your demands for timetables on some of your favorite money pits? How about welfare, ongoing for over 70 years now, and having cost since 1964 well over $10 trillion – basically the entire national debt through 2001? How much is enough? When will welfare be declared a success and ended?

How about “affirmative action,” another program going into its fifth decade? Being one of hundreds of thousands of Americans having been denied a job in the interest of “diversity” – the hiring manager had the grace to take me aside and tell me that, although I was the best candidate, he had been ordered instead ‘to hire a woman or person of color’ – just how much more money and reverse discrimination do you want to see poured into this execrable program that has hurt so many people innocent of any discrimination against socially favored groups?

How about “gun control” (the transparently mendacious attempt to castrate the Second Amendment)? This month we have learned that Canada’s program of gun registration and confiscation – promised in 1993 to make Canada safe from “gun violence” at a cost of $ 85 million – has so far cost $ 1, 083,000,000 and has resulted in a surge in violent crime against a now disarmed population? How much more money and killed and maimed citizens is this program, worth? And when will its timetable be established? In the US – where in 2003 there were less than 700 accidental gun deaths but over 70,000 accidental deaths from vehicles, falls, and swimming pools – what’s the timetable for “gun control” in the absence of “skate board control”?

Where is your exit strategy, Washington Post? How can you damn President Bush for not telling you his timetable to end US military involvement in Iraq when you sneer at anyone who dares to ask you about a timetable for ending the endless burden of insane Leftist environmental and educational policies? In what year can home owners and small businesspeople expect that they will no longer lose their homes or businesses because the rare and endangered Lesser Eastern Fart Mole has a burrow near them? At what date can a town’s taxpayers be relieved of each having to pay an additional $ 150 per year for the unfunded mandate that four “behaviorally challenged” children in their town be “mainlined” with the rest of the kids, mandating separate school buses and 12-hour per day trained guards and education facilitators because these kids will attack the other children or in other ways make education impossible without the extra supervision?

And while we’re at it, what’s your timetable for beginning to fairly report on the military? A review of The Post’s coverage of military stories in the past three years shows that over 80% of them are negative. I guess you at The Post don’t feel compelled to establish a timetable for accurate reporting about an institution which guarantees the freedom of the press you take for granted even as you spit bile at it.

How about the negative consequences we face every day from “timetable do-goodism” like chronic dependence on government programs; built-in work disincentives for clients in the welfare system; increased worker layoffs by employers as a result of crushing Leftist programs which may also be causing increased unemployment levels; and where such induced unemployment occurs, what about a timetable for ending the added significant costs that go beyond a waste of program resources?

As I cringed, watching TV and listening to Ted Kennedy (Embarrassment – MA) rant on about the Evil Bush Empire and how the US has exceeded Nazi Germany in its violent persecution of the peace-loving Third World, I was once again both saddened by how this unworthy man has cheapened my home state and was angered by the Left’s relentless, mindless attack upon most of what is best about the U.S. Timetable? Apparently, Mr. Kennedy’s timetable includes only meeting friends for drinks after work. Timetable? The Left has just one: when it will gain control of the country. I am sure that timetable is well-defined for you at The Post.